Mallard who faces robbery and second-degree murder charges in the February incident in a Corliss Park apartment, was offered a plea to second-degree murder for the sentence.

Appearing before Supreme Court Justice Patrick McGrath with his attorney, Sanford Finkel, Mallard quietly said he did not want the plea deal and wanted a trial.

Six other teenagers have already pleaded guilty to the crime and at least five of those have signed cooperation agreements with the prosecution to testify at trial that they saw Mallard allegedly stab Smith once in the chest as the group robbed him of $32, a necklace and a cellphone.

Rensselaer County Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Kennedy warned Mallard that if he goes to trial she does not have to prove he actually stabbed Smith in order to get a guilty verdict on felony murder and a sentence of 25 years to life.

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"I just have to prove that Mr. Mallard was involved in the robbery that resulted in the death," she told the court.

During her plea appearance in July, Keyanna Bradley, 18, pounded her chest to show McGrath where she said a man she knew as "Boogz" stabbed Smith in the bedroom of the apartment.

Smith stumbled into the bathroom, where he collapsed and died in a pool of blood.

"How do you know he stabbed him?" McGrath asked Bradley, who was a high school student at the time of the crime. "Did you see a knife?"

Bradley said she did not.

"He (Boogz) reached into his (Smith's) chest like this," Bradley said, hitting her chest with a closed fist. "Then I just saw all the blood."

Bradley pleaded guilty to first-degree robbery and will be sentenced to 10 years in prison and five years post-release supervision.

Bradley said she helped lure Smith, a 21-year-old Albany man known to his friends as "Tubu," to the apartment on the pretext of having sex with her and her friend Mariyah Zeigler, 16, who has also taken a plea to robbery in the case. The five men hid in another room awaiting a text message from the girls that they had removed Smith's clothes to see if he was armed.